Entries Tagged 'San Mateo' ↓

Yesterday my husband and I went out on a daytrip to Pescadero.  We haven’t really gone out on the weekends for a while so this was quite special.  We really enjoyed our time in this small historic town, and here is the story.

I got up quite early for a Saturday and the hubby followed soon after.  He charged his camera batteries and we headed out.  We drove through the mountains and ancient redwood forests on the extremly windy highway 84.  Along the way there were many bikers and I wondered how they got up there, and my husband was simply annoyed that some of them were hogging the entire road.  Once we hit highway 1 we turned left towards Pescadero.  We planned to stop at the Pigeon Point Lighthouse first.

I first saw the lighthouse from a distance when my company took us to a retreat.  I remembered the order of things a bit erroneously so I thought that Pigeon Point Lighthouse was north of Pescadero.  Once we already past Pescadero and still did not see the lighthouse my husband started to doubt my directions.  Pigeon Point is supposed to be one of the tallest lighthouses in North America, and he kept on asking me why we still do not see it.  I started to point behind a bunch of bushes and once we past it he laughed at me and said I was just pointing at a stick.  Then suddenly he saw the lighthouse perched at the edge of the ocean.  We turned in and found some parking in the dirt.

The lighthouse is currently not open to visitors because in 2001 two large pieces of its cornice fell to the ground, and so far San Mateo has not raised enough money to fix it.  However, the grounds are open and there was a surprisingly large number of visitors there including a lot of parents with kids.  I guessed that many of these visitors were trying to save a bit of money since the attraction is free.   The grounds were absolutely beautiful as flowers of all colors are currently blooming.  The normally brown cliffs were covered with dots of yellow and sea birds glided in the sky.  We then walked around a small path to the front of the lighthouse, and there was a flower patch with two giant pieces of whale bone.  One was a vertebrae and one was a humongous skull.  They looked quite eerie in a background of cheerful magenta and yellow flowers.

After visiting the lighthouse it was nearly 1pm, so we went to find some grub.  We planned to go to Duarte’s Tavern, a historic restaurant and bar in Pescadero that has been there since 1894.    It is famous for its artichoke dishes, olallieberry pie, and various seafood since Pescadero is supposed to be a fishing town.  Everything there is made locally and my company actually took us there during the retreat.  I just didn’t know how famous it was then.  I did remember the delicious artichoke soup and ollalieberry pie.   It was actually  on an episode of Food Network’s Diners, Dives, and Drive-ins and the host ate the house special cioppino.  I saw the picture of the cioppino online and salivated a bit over it.  So we drove a few miles north from the lighthouse and stopped at Duarte’s.  There was quite a crowd there and we were told that we had to wait for 10 to 15 minutes.  This wasn’t too bad so we waited and got a round table very close to the bathrooms.

After we got the menu I looked at the cioppino, and it was the most expensive dish there!  My husband encouraged me to get it since we really didn’t spend too much money eating out last month.  So I ordered it and he ordered a crab melt sandwhich.  The waitress gave us two sets of dishes, crab crackers, and a bib for the cioppino.  My husband thought it was funny that we were given bibs, and then the GIANT dish of crab legs, prawns, and clams came out.  I put my bib on because I knew that I was going to make a mess.  The hubby thought that was so funny that he took a picture.  We shared the crab sandwhich first just to get rid of a plate, and that was quite excellent.  It was pretty much all crab meat hugged by cheese and well toasted buttery bread.  There wasn’t much vegetable fillers in the crab like you would find  in other restaurants.  Then we started working on the cioppino, and it was seriously the longest meal we ever had in a restaurant, but it was a lot of fun to pull out all the crab meat and then drink a bit of the soup.

After eating everything we were quite full but I really wanted some ollallieberry pie and I have talked about it so much that my hubby really wanted to try it.  So we walked down about a block to a small market and bakery.  They had a collection of all types of pies and all kinds of local foods.  Some of the artisan breads with artichokes and cheese just smelled intoxicating.   We just bought a pie to go and went onto the next destination - Pebble Beach.

The 71 miles of the San Mateo coast is unusual in that it is very close to large centers of population, but very few people visit so the beaches are quite pristine. The hubby and I have been to Half Moon Bay multiple times to beach comb and walk, but we never drove as far south as Pescadero.  As we were driving there the hubby said that we will not find these  uncrowded clean beaches in Southern California.  Pescadero has several beaches including Pescadero State Beach, Bean Hollow Beanch, and Pebble Beach.    Pebble Beach is a very small beach that is unique in that instead of sand it is covered by pebbles of all colors.  The pebbles are polished by the tides so they glisten in the sun.  There is also a very large area of tidepools next to it where you can find small marine life.     We walked down to the pebbles section and took pictures of the holey sand formations and pebbles first, and then walked over to the tidepools.  There were small fish, hermit crabs, and tons of snails in the tidepools, but nothing extremely exciting.  The hubby was hoping to see some colorful anemones or starfish so he could take pictures and he was disappointed.  So we went back to the pebbles area and dug around.  A lot of the stones were quite pretty and some of them were laced agates like the ones my mom and I used to dig up in construction sand when I was a kid.  It is illegal to take the pebbles because they are natural  materials, but we found some tiny pieces of sea glass so we took those.  The entire beach just smelled so fresh and it felt so good to sit down on the omnipresent pebbles.  It was definitely more fun than walking on sand.

After hanging around for about an hour we decided to head home as the sky became overcast.   We stopped to buy some vanilla ice cream and then I warmed up a slice of olallieberry pie for each of us when we got home and topped them with the ice cream.  It certainly made my tastebuds happy.

We definitely had a lot of fun exploring this part of San Mateo County, and I think instead of major vacations we could definitely save money by going on more day trips of places near us.  The Bay Area definitely has a lot of interesting places to see and experience just within an one to two hour drive.  After going to Pescadero we found that there is a seal preserve near by where you can see thousands of seals from December to March.  We might go visit next year!

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This is a topic my husband and I have discussed numerous times since his parents packed up, sold and gave away practically everything,  and became missionaries. Now that we are expecting a baby we are considering it further.  If we were to move we would probably go to our house in Chino Hills, and here is a list of pros and cons that came up in our discussions.

First, I think the biggest thing that I have kvetched about is the cost of living here in the Bay Area.  My husband and I both feel some of the nesting instinct now and he really wants his kid to grow up in a nice house with a backyard, like the one he grew up in. I think it is  reasonable to wish that  your child’s life to be as good or even better than yours.   To have a house comparable to the one we have in Chino Hills we would need over a million dollars here.  The school district in Chino Hills has elementary and middle schools with API scores over 900, and that kind of scores also give real estate a further premium here in the Bay Area. The amount of mortgage we pay on the Chino Hills home is less than our rent for a two bedroom apartment here, and it just seems ridiculous that we cannot reasonably afford the same quality of life here in the Bay Area even though we have above average incomes.

We both expect that we will not make as much money down south.  There just aren’t that many high tech companies there, and the unemployment rate in the Inland Empire is much higher than here in the Silicon Valley right now.  However, we are both pretty talented and graduated from the top engineering programs in the nation so we are pretty confident we will find something.  Chino Hills is also situated right on the border of Orange County so there are job opportunities there.  Of course, we will try to find jobs there before we decide to leave.

There are some  circumstances that could keep us in the Bay Area forever. One big thing is family.  Right now pretty much all of our family members live within an one hour drive and having that support system is quite valuable. We also have more friends here in the Bay Area than in Southern California.     Also, if we cannot find reasonable employment down south then we would probably just stay here.  The hubby also likes the weather here a lot more, but Southern California is actually sunnier and I prefer that more.

Anyway, we are not planning to move right now or even right after the baby is born.  The hubby is thinking of making a decision on this sometime before the kid enters elementary school so it may happen in five years, or not at all. I am definitely all for moving to a  higher quality of life if possible.  Meanwhile I am also working on generating a good non-salary income so that we can go wherever we want to.

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Last week was a pretty exciting week for us.  On Thursday we saw our baby’s heartbeat, and on Friday we were robbed.  We did not find out that we were victims of a crime until Saturday, though.  Basically, some thieves went to the carports behind our condo complex on Friday night and smashed my husband’s car window and ripped out his mounted GPS unit.

Here is the really stupid part, the thief or thieves apparently were in such a hurry that they ripped out the adapter and broke the cord.  The GPS usually does not have a charge so the unit is basically useless without the adapter.  I bet they felt stupid after running to their getaway car and finding out they broke the adapter.  Then again, adapters aren’t very expensive so maybe they have a pile of spare parts.   It seems that they did not enter the car at all because nothing else was stolen.  My hubby had at least a dozen CDs in the car that are worth more than the GPS.

The GPS was a Christmas gift to us from my hubby’s parents and we do not really expect that we will get it back.  We reported the incident to the police and an officer swung by.  He said that unless we had a serial number of the unit then it is pretty much impossible to identify the unit was ours even if they seized it from the criminals.  This makes complete sense, but my husband threw away the box a long time ago so there is no way we can track it.  The most annoying thing about this incident is really the broken car window because it left glass all over the floor and inside the car.  It took my husband and I an hour just to clean the seats and the floor, and we both got cuts from the glass.  My husband said that if he saw the thieves at his car he would have just given them two hundred dollars cash not to break his window because it is a big inconvenience for us.

Now my husband’s car is in the shop waiting for an inspection and repair and he is borrowing my car to go to work.  We will probably have to pay an auto insurance deductible for the window repair even though it was a theft and we are not at fault.  It really makes me wonder how much money these thieves make from these used devices because the GPS unit that was stolen from us costs $80 new, and it is about 1.5 years old so I estimate it to be worth $15 to $40 dollars just from gadgetry depreciation.  Additionally, since the thieves ripped out the adpater they probably need to replace the adapter just to get a buyer.   I looked online and the adapter costs around $15 to $20, so if they do buy a new adapter the profit they would get is around $-5 to $20.  Is that really worth smashing our car window?  I guess I just don’t understand criminals.

Anyway, I’m thankful that my hubby’s car wasn’t stolen and other things weren’t stolen. On a completely unrelated note we found a hummingbird nest on the flower vines on our fence, and there is a super cute baby hummingbird in it.  That kind of made the weekend a little brighter.

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I am leaving San Mateo for China first thing in the morning tomorrow.  Sorry for the lack of updates but these couple weeks have been insanely busy for me.  We actually still haven’t completely closed on the house because of a bunch of mix ups and confusion.  Hopefully it will be done tomorrow, but I won’t be here to see it.  That sounds pretty precarious and believe me, I have been pulling out my hair for about two days.  I have also been trying to tie up loose ends at work and it has been two extremely chaotic weeks.

I am so glad that I will be leaving on a jetplane tomorrow because I just need to get away from this crazy country for a while and escape to another crazy country.   We will be watching the presidential election through the filter of CCTV.  The hubby already voted early on Saturday, so he is all set.

I will be back early morning of November 14th, but there will be an excellent guest post by The Wandering Tax Pro in a couple days.   Stay tuned!

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The hubby and I have been married for almost one year and we celebrated early in the past weekend.  The hubby booked a full moon kayaking trip in at the Beach House and also reserved us spots for Sunday brunch at Ritz Carlton Half Moon Bay.Since I planned his birthday weekend to Napa I let him plan this trip.  It is only fair.  This is my travelogue for this wonderful weekend.

Half Moon Bay is a coastal San Mateo city about 20 miles from where we live famous for the yearly Mavericks Surf Contest and the Pumpkin Festival where the worlds’ most enormous pumpkins compete.  We set out on Saturday morning and arrived in Half Moon Bay in about 30 minutes.  We stepped in a small local restaurnt called The Flying Fish Grill and got some lunch, and then we headed to our hotel.  Unfortunately, our room wasn’t ready yet so we went to Poplar Beach after checking out the kayaks at Pillar Point Harbor.  Poplar Beach is one of many public beaches along Half Moon Bay and it has a small free parking lot.  If you go to the main beach a block over it has a parking lot that charges a fee.  At Poplar Beach we spent about two hours looking for beach glass.  Before we got married we went to that beach once and I started looking for beach glass.  The hubby never heard of this before and said, “why are you picking up garbage?!” I explained to him that people collect beach glass for fun and make them into jewelry.  Then it turned into a bit of a competition and he helped me collect glass. Funnily enough we saw another couple collect glass, too, and the whole time the hubby was saying he couldn’t believe people liked garbage.   After we got home on that trip I made some of the glass into pendants and sold them for around $50 at a church craft fair.  So this time the hubby thought of looking for beach glass as a treasure hunt. After two hours of hunting, we found a small pocket full of browns, greens, and white pieces.  I also found a tiny cobalt blue piece and a quarter from 1965.

We returned to the hotel and took a bit of a nap since the kayaking event was at 7pm.  After waking up we walked down to Pillar Point Harbor again. Unfortunately, it was quite overcast so we were unable to see the full moon.   There were a group of about 10 people and we were instructed to put on many layers of stuff.  There is a jacket plus a skirt that stretches over the kayak and also a life jacket. The kayaks held two people and were a bit larger than the kayaks we used in Kauai.  The hubby sat in the back to steer and I was in front.  We paddled towards the breakwaters and we saw hundreds of pelicans and seagulls.  Some people paddled a bit too close to them and they flew towards us and plopped in the water.  Some of the pelicans were still shedding their baby furry feathers.  A couple harbor seals also popped out their heads above the water.

After paddling for more than an hour, we cleared the last breakwater and we were in the open ocean.  The sea was quite calm and the waves bobbed the kayaks slightly.  It was quite dark and the glow sticks on our paddles indicated where the other kayaks were.  It was very quiet and we could hear people speak quite clearly.  We were only in the open ocean for a little while and then we headed back into the harbor.  On the way back we made a stop at Mavericks Beach. This is the beach where the annual death-defying Mavericks Surf Contest is held.  The spot where landed had several giant carved pumice stones.  The guide explained that they were monuments in remembrance of those who died surfing there.  It was quite dark so we couldn’t see much, but the guide explained that this was a dangerous place to surf.  The waves could reach more than 25 feet during the winter and there are sharks in the waters.

We left the beach and headed towards the harbor.  It was getting quite dark, but with every paddle a plume of green light glowed in the water.  I have seen this before at Stinson Beach so I knew that it was a kind of microorganism that glows when you disturb them.  I tried to get the hubby to look at the glow but he thought that they were bubbles and I couldn’t quite convince him that something in the water is giving off light.  Finally one of the guides said, “I love this bioluminescent stuff!”  Then I said that my hubby doesn’t see it and other people started to paddle to show him.  Then he sort of believed that the green glow wasn’t just bubbles.  After three hours of paddling we landed back at the harbor and walked back to the hotel.  We were quite hungry and the hubby called the concierge to see if any restaurants were still open.  Apparently a Mexican place called Tres Amigos is open until midnight so we went there and filled our tummies.  Then we returned the hotel and fell asleep.

The next day, we ate a little bit of the complimentary breakfast at the hotel, and went back to our room to nap some more.  Finally we checked out and headed to Sunday brunch at the Ritz Carlton. The Sunday brunch at the Ritz Carlton’s Navio restaurant was beyond our expectations. First of all, we didn’t know that it was a buffet because the hubby booked it after seeing a review somewhere that said the Sunday brunch was good. I also didn’t know that the restaurant overlooked the greens of the golf course and the blue ocean.  There was a huge selection of foods all over the world including sushi, caviar, dimsum, and prime rib.  The  small appetizer sized dishes  were presented in the most delectable and appealing manner.  Our favorite was a small plate of roast duck breast served upon steamed bokchoy.  The dessert station was also amazing.  There were half a dozen types of chocolate truffles and fruits and many beautifully presented tiny desserts.  I heard one man there say, “I want to take this to our table and just look at it!”  There was also a dessert with gold flakes on it and I laughed a bit because the hubby joked about how pretentious people who eat gold are.  Anyway, I took about six or seven desserts and just indulged in the decadence.  After four plates of culinary delight, we couldn’t eat anymore, but we really wanted more.  The funny thing is that I had a dream a couple weeks prior about an extremely fancy buffet with chocolate truffles and meats.  I told the hubby, “this is the buffet of my dreams!” and we sat there laughing like idiots for a bit.

After the food we walked to the back of the hotel and followed a path down to the beach.  The beach is public so you don’t have to be a hotel guest to go there. The beach was extremely small and we combed it for about an hour for beach glass.  Unfortunately, all the pieces we found were quite small.  The hubby said to keep them anyway because he wants to fill a spaghetti jar with sea glass.  We were quite tired after that and walked back to the valet for our car.  This is where the hubby remarked, “why is every car here so expensive looking?”  Indeed, all the cars parked in front of the hotel were Mercedes, BMWs, and such.  Then we saw a Toyota van pull up and I realized that they park the cheaper cars at the larger parking lot.  So I said, “see not everyone here drives an expensive car, they just park the most expensive looking ones in front!”   I guess the Ritz needs to look ritzy, but we definitely had a great time there without the need to look rich.

So that’s my weekend of adventure and gluttony.  It’s great to get away from computers for a while to bond with the hubby and the great outdoors.  It certainly wasn’t cheap, but it was completely worth it and I hope we can do it more often.

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